I am really thrilled to be with four other contributors to Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home this coming Saturday at the Deckle Edge Literary Festival in the Richland library in downtown Columbia.

Harriet Hancock, Ed Madden, Alvin McEwen, Tom Summers and I will be swapping stories from our book on a panel at 11:00 o’clock in Room 213.

No smiles left behind when Harriet Hancock and I spend an afternoon in her home sipping wine, reminiscing and storytelling. Looks like the woman hovering behind Harriet sipped more than she reminisced.

(Thanks to Becci Robbins for putting up with our nonsense that afternoon and for taking this photo)

My acknowledgments for Committed to Home begin with this paragraph:

My coconspirator and inspiration for this book is Harriet Hancock. I first approached Harriet about writing her personal story at a South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Business Guild Christmas party at Tom Brown’s house in December, 2013. She had an enthusiastic response, and in our subsequent conversations early in 2014, the project morphed to include the personal observations of other leaders in LGBTQ organizations in South Carolina over the past thirty years. Her interest in the project has been ongoing and always encouraging. She was helpful in the selection of the contributors.

Ed Madden, Alvin McEwen and Tom Summers were three of the six contributors who actually wrote their own essays which are distinctive in time, place and storylines but oh, so very personal and compelling. I am looking forward to sharing their stories, along with Harriet’s, during our conversation on the panel Saturday morning.

Please join us if you can!

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About Sheila Morris

Sheila Morris is an essayist with humorist tendencies who periodically indulges her desires to write outside her genre by trying to write fiction and poetry. In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press is publishing her collection of first-person accounts of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBT organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBT history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality.
She has published four nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and a group of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award in 2008. Her writings have been included in various anthologies - most recently the 2017 Saints and Sinners Literary Magazine.
She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike and Charly. Her Texas roots are never too far from her thoughts.